Feathered Fruit Peelers

Does it help or hurt a plant to have birds eat their seeds? Birds can help plants by moving their seeds to new places, but what happens to seeds inside birds’ guts? For some plants, seeds that pass through a bird’s gut may actually be at an advantage compared to seeds that never get eaten. But does that depend on the bird species, or the plant species, or both? Tune in to our discussion of Fricke et al's "Functional outcomes of mutualistic network interactions: A community-scale study of frugivore gut passage on germination."